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Appendix Two |
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"Jelly Roll Morton is one of the great figures of jazz music . . . He is also one of the best pianists I have ever heard . . . The music on every side is almost uniformly magnificent ... I must also mention the trio records . . . It is through them that he gave us a very large part of his touching music . . . long before Benny Goodman s trip, which was presented to the public as an innovation and which always remained far below the Morton Trio's performances. . . "-H. Panassie, Jazz Information, 1941.
"(the record) Doctor Jazz reveals most of the qualities of classic jazz in their fullest development. It is difficult
to exhaust its variety: wide contrast of timbres; African polyrhythms; breaks; chain-breaks and solos; head' arrangement; free polyphony and Afro-American variation shown by the constant mutations of rhythmic pattern, tone, instrumentation, and melody."
-R. Blesch, Shining Trumpets, 1945.
"If you never heard Jelly Roll at his best, you ain't never heard jazz piano. . * "—Bud Scott
What jazzmen had known for forty years the young fans began to leam in the Thirties. Like Poe, jazz was first "discovered" by European critics; and at first there were more serious listeners for this music in Paris and London than in New York or Chicago. One of the English record collectors who had admired Jelly from afar met him at last in the Jungle Inn in Washington. His very British account provides a very amusing side-look at Mr. Jelly Lord who finally had encountered someone who knew more about his music than he did himself:
"Morton had never heard of a record collector. I was the first one he had ever met. When I asked him if he had any of his old records, he laughed and said, 'No, what would you want with any of those old things?' The idea that there might be people who collected and treasured his records had never occurred to him.
TE didn't have all my Morton records in Washington, but |
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